The Representative Patent
Richelle signaled the royal guards with a glance. They understood its meaning at once. The two men planted their feet on David’s back and wrenched the spearhead from his shoulder. The backward-facing barbs shredded the wound as they came free, yet the pain and crushing pressure lifted with them. Richelle spoke.
“My apologies for the suspicion, Mister Bloomfield. Please, sit.”
“Thank you for your mercy, Your Majesty.”
“Stand down.”
The order, of course, was not meant for David. The guards obeyed without hesitation. In giving it, Richelle held herself with a propriety she had never shown before. Legs together, hands resting neatly atop her knees, spine perfectly straight—she looked every inch the model noblewoman. Philip would have laughed himself breathless at the sight. She hated assuming such a pose, yet it was the best she could manage. Compared to the moment she had entered the audience chamber, her demeanor had become almost painfully courteous.
She knew well enough how the Jihan mind worked. If David harbored any resentment over the recent “emergency restraint,” she would do whatever was necessary to mend the offense. David’s thoughts, however, ran along rather different lines.
Though his shoulder joint had been pierced and the guards had trampled him, he had suffered no real harm—at least by Jihan standards. Countless writhing, worm-like things already swarmed both shoulders, knitting flesh and bone. The pain had been mastered as well. Through centuries of persecution the Jihan had cultivated a singular philosophy. They possessed no souls; therefore resurrection and eternal life were impossible. Lacking souls, they valued only matter. Unable to live forever, they prized only the present. And their present was an instant so brief that a human could scarcely comprehend it. Anything that had happened even a few minutes earlier, if it was not happening now, simply did not belong to the present. It might be more accurate to say they were incapable of being bound by the past.
David was a quintessential Jihan financier. He had incurred no loss. Humiliation was merely an emotion, a concept; the pain had already vanished. The shoulder run through by the spear had healed completely. The only damage was a hole and some staining on his coat. Against the profit he stood to gain, such trivialities were nothing at all.
With that calculation settled, he said, “Shall we speak of business now?”
Richelle gave a stiff nod. It was not merely the weight of her hair that made the motion so wooden. She could not begin to imagine what this Jihan might demand.
“As I told you earlier,” she began, “my kingdom no longer possesses the means. Could you not reduce the interest, even a little?”
“How much did you have in mind?”
“The year’s tax revenue will be tallied soon. I imagine it will not differ greatly from your own expectations. If you would forgive a single year’s interest—”
“No.” David shook his head with finality. One hundred thousand gulden was a considerable sum. Smaller, certainly, than the Zylan crown felt it to be, yet if even one year’s payment went uncollected, David would lack the capital to continue his operations.
“I ask with difficulty,” Richelle said. She loathed asking anyone for anything. Like any noble, she possessed a fierce pride and preferred to command rather than plead. In nearly every matter of her life she had been the one issuing orders. Dealings with the Jihan were the exception. She continued, striving to preserve the dignity of a sovereign. “Would it not benefit your own firm as well?”
“In what way?”
“The people of Zylan… the Queen…” Richelle faltered, then pressed on. “Yes. The people of Zylan love their queen deeply. You know this, I trust?”
“Of course, Your Majesty. I have observed it for a very long time.”
“And, as is true across the continent, they despise the Jihan. Correct?”
“Yes.”
David could already see where she was steering the conversation.
“Consider it,” she continued. “If you—a Jihan—were to support me…” She hesitated again. “If you, a Jihan, were to forgive the debts of the Queen, your own popularity would surely rise.”
“I see,” David replied without inflection.
Richelle pressed on, growing impatient. “Well? I consider it an excellent proposal.”
“I do not.”
“What?” Richelle’s face twisted. The expression was not merely one of displeasure; she was genuinely bewildered.
David said, “I do not think as Your Majesty does. Even if the people of Zylan became friendly toward me, I would gain nothing. On the contrary, my clients would begin to view their contracts with me as trivial.”
There was no falsehood in his words. Even Richelle herself ruled in precisely the manner he described. To be corrected by a Jihan was humiliating in the extreme, yet it was human nature to seize from those one loved and swear obedience to those one feared. The offer was not one the other party could swallow. Love from a Jihan! One might as well seek grace from Hell.
Reproaching herself for such naïve thinking, she spoke again, her voice now edged with urgency. “But you cannot wish for my bankruptcy either. Can you?”
“Of course not, Your Majesty.”
“Then tell me plainly. What is it you want from me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
David’s tone suggested honest confusion, yet Richelle did not miss the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his face. Only then did she realize this Jihan financier would never have entered a royal audience without first securing some advantage.
She swallowed. She hoped the sound was inaudible, but to her own ears it roared like thunder. Clearing her throat, she strove for a measured pace. “Mister David Bloomfield. Do not pretend ignorance. I know perfectly well you are not the sort of man who would forgo interest from me and my heirs merely to extract five hundred thousand gulden immediately.”
“Yet only moments ago, Your Majesty entertained the notion of killing me and confiscating my assets—knowing full well it might turn every Jihan on the island against Zylan.”
“…Your jests go too far.”
David laughed. For Richelle it was a mercy. She understood once more that this was a thoroughly typical Jihan. That the Jihan refused to be bound by the past and that they weaponized the past against others were two entirely separate matters. They could speak of old grudges without feeling the slightest resentment.
Two emotions warred inside her: the urge to smash the banker’s skull, and profound relief that his words had been a joke.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty. But if not at a time like this, when else might I enjoy a long conversation with someone so beautiful?”
The moment the words left his mouth, Richelle’s face crumpled. It smoothed again almost at once, yet the reaction had been instantaneous. She lifted her chin. “So the jests are not yet finished.”
“I apologize, Your Majesty. May we return to business?”
“Do so.”
The tone clearly conveyed you had better. It was every inch the voice of Zylan’s queen. David smiled inwardly and said, “Thank you for your permission, Your Majesty. My proposal concerns a patent.”
Queen Richelle—the girl-like woman who had once been Prince Richard—regarded David with open curiosity. He knew exactly where that curiosity sprang from.
“A patent?” she asked.
“Yes, Your Majesty. As you no doubt suspected, I desired patent rights from the very moment I first extended the loan.”
The curiosity in her eyes swiftly curdled into suspicion. “But for what? Beyond the royal demesne I possess no further rights of taxation in this realm.”
She spoke the truth. Over the past century every right the crown once held had slipped from the queen’s fingers. It was not that Selina II had permanently surrendered every privilege—taxation, tax exemption, hunting, logging, harbor usage, and a hundred others—though she had sold some outright. Yet the queens who followed, none of them wiser than Selina, had sold even those patents due to expire. The ignoble tradition had continued until Richelle herself became regent.
Silently praising both Selina II and Queen Richelle, David said, “What I desire is not a right of taxation. It is a form of patent that has never existed before. The closest analogue would be a charter for a free city.”
“A free city? There are no longer any villages in Zylan without rights of self-government!”
David did not point out that three sizable settlements still lacked such autonomy. “Which is why I said ‘analogue,’ Your Majesty.”
“Then tell me exactly what sort of patent you want.”
“I wish to become the representative of all Jihan.”
“No.” Richelle’s refusal was immediate and absolute. “Offer something else. You may monopolize any number of novel rights. But you cannot become the representative of the Jihan. No one can. No Jihan may have a representative.”
“Why not?”
“Damn it all. I thought you understood your own station.”
Richelle abandoned queenly decorum. She began to speak like any commoner in the streets. “You are Jihan. The Jihan are not human; they are the property of the crown. Property cannot possess a soul, and those without souls cannot have representatives.”
David barely kept from laughing. It seemed she was the one who did not fully understand her own position. She was not wrong, of course. He was Jihan; he could hold no political rights. Yet he was not merely any Jihan—he was the Jihan who could bankrupt the Kingdom of Zylan. He chose not to mention that fact.
“But Your Majesty,” he said instead, “the Church of Zylan is free.”
“Damn you. We cannot break with the Apostolic See.”
“The Apostolic See recognized the Zylan Church’s independent right to interpret doctrine two hundred years ago.”
“The Seventh Erian Edict concerned only the coronation, and it explicitly affirmed the primacy of the See in its first line. The Church of Zylan is free only beneath the protection of the Apostle and his successors.”
“Yet what the Savior anointed and established was the Church of the Apostolic See and the Holy Council—not any single individual. As the Third Portian Council declared, the Apostle’s infallibility does not extend to the Church of Zylan any more than the authority of Apostle Clemens VIII does.”
Richelle flinched as though struck. She stiffened for a moment, and the pause allowed her to reclaim something of her royal bearing. Straightening her spine once more, she said, “I had not realized you were a conciliarist.”
“Anti-apostolicist would be the more accurate term, Your Majesty.”
“It is only the fact that you are Jihan that has kept you alive.”
“I confess I feel occasional pride in my bloodline.”
Richelle gave a short, involuntary laugh. “Nevertheless, you cannot become the representative of the Jihan.” She remained adamant.
David felt a flicker of genuine bewilderment. The Richelle he knew—Richard, before the change—had never been a devout woman. Before her accession, while still a man, she had borrowed money from him and confiscated monastic lands besides. He found it difficult to believe she would reject his proposal on grounds of doctrine and the authority of the Apostolic See.
He met her gaze. She stared back, yet he refused to look away. Instead he studied her, seeking information. For a Jihan it was a nearly incomprehensible notion: a man without faith, transformed into a woman by that very god, who then became devout as a consequence? It made no sense. She had always performed piety before her subjects, true. But before a Jihan who could not bear witness? That was not like her, nor was it particularly intelligent.
Slowly he reviewed their entire conversation. The signal had been there all along. He smiled.
It would have been stranger not to notice when she had been so obvious.
“I understand,” he said. “When does the delegation carrying news of Your Majesty’s accession depart for the Apostolic See?”
“Within the month, Mister Bloomfield. Have you any suggestions to offer in your capacity as representative of Zylan’s Jihan?”
“Haha.”
The laughter escaped before he could stop it. The tension drained away. He could scarcely believe something so simple had required such a tortuous path.
“If not, I shall go draft the patent at once.”
Richelle rose. David stopped her.
“I do have one.”
“What is it?”
He stood as well, lifted the gift parcel still resting on the table, and approached her. Dropping to one knee, he offered it with both hands.
“Please accept this humble tribute.”
“A rather modest first petition for a representative,” she remarked, accepting the bundle. Had she not turned away, she still would not have seen the smile that curved his lowered face.